A Style.com exclusive. Carolina Herrera Fall 200) Trunk Show July 1It - 27 www.style.com/herrera . r:.' . - ""." '"' . ".' (1)-' ->. êi5 o o .. C\I 0' <<I "- (]) "- Q5 J: . as .S; Õ "- co Ü Q5 c 0) Ow (]) o ST :;; .' . .' . ... . ''''. . . " '. .,,:-.. ... ...; ." .' )", , : .. '. . -.. ' .. , \ ...; .. . :. . " '" .;.... ,- ",r" 'L I ." '!",Iþ. 'to t '-, . '=-.'. , " . ",t:.. . . 'l . . , .... " ,,5 . . ':.. iO! . " >. >. .;. }<" . ' . I' " t' . . . )" ,\ ., '::'" ,':J: .\ y . ; : };'. .., .: . ........,' . ,, '.' . E.COM-' .; ; THE 0 INE HOME OF VOGUE & W President, I feared for my country," she explains. "Bill's Presidency, the in- stitutional Presidency and the integrity of the Constitution hung in the bal- ance. I knew what I did and said in the next days and weeks would influence not just Bill's future and mine, but also Am . ,,, erlca s. She is no less assertive than Blumen- thal in her depiction of the enemies they were battling: I do believe there was, and still is, an in- terlocking network of groups and individuals who want to turn the clock back on many of the advances our country has made, from civil rights and women's rights to consumer and environmental regulation, and they use all the tools at their disposal-money, power, influence, media and politics-to achieve their ends. In recent years, they have also mastered the politics of personal destruction. Fueled by extremists who have been fighting progressive politicians and ideas for decades, they are funded by corporations, foundations and individuals like Richard Mellon Scaife. , ' Although she does not descend to the "politics of personal destruction"- there are no dark intimations of mur- der or sex scandals-she is not averse to firing a bit of buckshot. When Newt Gingrich's mother let slip that her son, the new House Speaker, often referred to Hillary as a "bitch," she invited them both, along with his "then wife," to the White House. What ensues is a scene in which Gingrich's wife belittles him for babbling about things he does not understand, and his mother retorts, "Newty always knows what he's talking I about." Similarly, she ridicules Chief Justice William Rehnquist for pre- I siding over her husband's Senate trial wearing a robe he had designed with chevrons of gold braid. "He said he got the idea from the costumes in a pro- duction of Gilbert & Sullivan's comic opera Iolanthe," she writes. "How fitting that he should wear a theatrical cos- tume to preside over a political farce." Both Blumenthal and Clinton, with their wrenching lurches from policy discourses to scandal dissections, are able to re-create the vertigo of the era, during which missile attacks on Al Q.ê.eda came in the wake of squirmy testimony about inappropriate behav- ior, and stories about Moscow summits vied with those about distinguishing genital characteristics. They also pre- sent a largely persuasive case that prose- cutors and the press (though not the ,,:,. ,',. :1 f . '0/;\ " American public) became overly, even weirdly, obsessed with the Whitewater story. Combined with their excesses of loyalty and their unwillingness to reflect on the President's pathological indisci- pline, the result is yet another type of vertigo: that which comes from rolling your eyes and nodding your head at the same time. These books, of course, will not for a moment sway any of the Clintons' ar- dent adversaries, nor does that seem to be their intention. Like much of the discourse from the period, they appear to be meant to stoke old partisan ar- guments rather than to quell them. In this they exemplifY the very trend-the shrilling of political discourse-that they decry. Raucous, partisan debate can be healthy, up to a point, and liberals will point out that conservatives have here- tofore dominated the best-seller lists, as well as cable television, and have been notably more aggressive in tearing down their opponents. Partly that is because liberals are less cohesive and angry; more timid and easily cowed. Even when lib- erals have strong beliefs, they act as tf they were not quite sure they actually agree with them. They are congenitally more comfortable humming the theme of "All Things Considered" than the theme of "Crossfire." Until now, the most successful au- thors on the provocative left have been those who cloaked their jabs with humor, such as Michael Moore, Molly Ivins, and AI Franken. This may be changing. All three will be publish- ing more pugnacious books this year, and so will the liberal columnists Paul Krugman and Joe Conason. Eventu- ally, they may even be joined by Bill Clinton, if he decides to emulate his wife and his old Knight Templar by producing a memoir that ravages as well as ruminates. All this best-selling bellicosity is likely to continue the trend away from the old recollected-in-tranquillity man- ner of White House memoirs. At the very least, it will make for more inter- esting reading. And we are unlikely to miss, at least for a while, the quaint plat- itudes of a Raymond Moley; who con- cluded his memoir by calling for a future politics based on "fine thinkmg and gen- erous impulse." .